The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 eBook

NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Dan Stuart once told us, that he did not remember
that he ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition
at Somerset House in his life. He might occasionally
have escorted a party of ladies across the way that
were going in; but he never went in of his own head.
Yet the office of the Morning Post newspaper stood
then just where it does now—­we are carrying
you back, Reader, some thirty years or more—­with
its gilt-globe-topt front facing that emporium of our
artists’ grand Annual Exposure. We sometimes
wish, that we had observed the same abstinence with
Daniel.

A word or two of D.S. He ever appeared to us
one of the finest tempered of Editors. Perry,
of the Morning Chronicle, was equally pleasant, with
a dash, no slight one either, of the courtier.
S. was frank, plain, and English all over. We
have worked for both these gentlemen.

It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges;
to trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river;

With holy reverence to approach the rocks,
Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient
song.

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim’s
exploratory ramblings after the cradle of the infant
Nilus, we well remember on one fine summer holyday
(a “whole day’s leave” we called
it at Christ’s Hospital) sallying forth at rise
of sun, not very well provisioned either for such
an undertaking, to trace the current of the New River—­Middletonian
stream!—­to its scaturient source, as we
had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. Gallantly
did we commence our solitary quest—­for
it was essential to the dignity of a DISCOVERY, that
no eye of schoolboy, save our own, should beam on
the detection. By flowery spots, and verdant
lanes, skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many
a baffling turn; endless, hopeless meanders, as it
seemed; or as if the jealous waters had dodged
us, reluctant to have the humble spot of their nativity
revealed; till spent, and nigh famished, before set
of the same sun, we sate down somewhere by Bowes Farm,
near Tottenham, with a tithe of our proposed labours
only yet accomplished; sorely convinced in spirit,
that that Brucian enterprise was as yet too arduous
for our young shoulders.

Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the
traveller is the tracing of some mighty waters up
to their shallow fontlet, than it is to a pleased
and candid reader to go back to the inexperienced essays,
the first callow flights in authorship, of some established
name in literature; from the Gnat which preluded to
the AEneid, to the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod
on.

In those days every Morning Paper, as an essential
retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who
was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs.
Sixpence a joke—­and it was thought pretty
high too—­was Dan Stuart’s settled
remuneration in these cases. The chat of the
day, scandle, but, above all, dress, furnished
the material. The length of no paragraph was to
exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but
they must be poignant.